Four Beauty Apps I’m Obsessed With That You’ll Love

The marriage between fashion and tech has heated up in the last few years, but it looks like 2016 will be the year tech made personalized beauty a reality.

With the introduction of several new mobile beauty apps, women – and especially women of color – are being given access to digital hair and skin care tools and resources designed to meet their unique beauty needs. These apps help save time, money and hassle, by making it easy for women to virtually test out a lip or skin product, recommending hair and skin products based on users’ unique beauty profile, and providing on-demand access to styling experts.

I’ve been testing out a lot of beauty apps lately but here are the four that I’m obsessed with and I know you’ll love.

A publicists friend sent me details on this virtual nail color tester app last year and I thought it was just ok. I retried the app recently after their 2016 upgrade and fell down the rabbit-hole of nail color nirvana.

The app allows you to view more than 100 Morgan Taylor lacquer shades on various skin types and nail shapes and lengths. You can also use the app to “match a color” by taking a photo of any color you like and letting the app show you the closest Morgan Taylor nail polish shade to your pic. You can “favorite” your top selections and save them to your phone camera roll for social sharing or quick viewing access.

You can’t purchase directly from the app yet – which is a little bit of a bummer – but can order your fav shades directly from the Morgan Taylor website.

The first time I used TresseNoire was for my wedding last year and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Getting glam on my wedding day with TresseNoire

The on-demand hair styling service sends credentialed natural-hair care trained styling professionals to your home or office to get your coils tight. TresseNoire recently released its first mobile app which allows you to schedule hair styling sessions and consultations at the touch of a button.

The affordable service is currently available in New York and Philadelphia. I’d recommend signing up for the app even if you are not in those areas, so you’ll be notified when service starts in your city. Once you try it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

I read about the Cocoa Swatches online and felt compelled to test it out immediately. Specially designed for women of color, the app allows you to see how makeup shades look on brown skin. A simple idea – ahem, makeup industry – but one that saves you the hassle of having to return that too-good-to-be-true, blush that you couldn’t try on in the drug store.

The app also provides video tutorials, reviews and tips from makeup experts. It also provides a link to purchase all the products featured on the app.

The app has a ton of swatches on the app, but look for it to get even better as the platform grows and more shades comparisons are uploaded.

Cast Beauty is one of those “the future is now” type of apps. The weather-inspired beauty forecasting app provides daily hair and skin care product recommendations based on the weather and users’ beauty profiles. I’ve been working with them for a few months and think the service is so cool. Who among us hasn’t spent a full Sunday getting our hair tight only to have it ruined by a burst of humidity on Monday?

The idea that an app can help me avoid bad hair days just makes me say, “YAAASSS. And, what took so long?”

Sometimes you need that forewarning to check your edges:).

The app lets you purchase any recommended products directly through your Amazon account (which can be a little dangerous for Prime subscribers like myself). Cast Beauty is still in its initial phases and the app will continue to get smarter as more users create profiles and the database grows.

Since we all check the weather each morning anyway, why not try Cast Beauty and get your daily temperature and beauty forecast in one?